


No Use Crying About It

by Capucine



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Jason Todd is Robin, Jason-Centric, Mistakes, Pain, Poor Kiddo, Powerlessness, Regret, Sex Worker, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 11:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6954244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capucine/pseuds/Capucine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason finds a girl on the street who needs help. </p>
<p>He doesn't help as much as he was hoping. At all. Neither does the clinic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Use Crying About It

**Author's Note:**

> So, this might be a little heavy. It's based on my real life feelings, though very different circumstances.

The deal about leaving someone in someone else’s hands was you had to be able to trust that person. You had to believe that they wouldn’t harm them, wouldn’t leave scars, and definitely wouldn’t fucking kill them.

Jason was a suspicious person as it was, despite the bright colors of the Robin costume that suggested innocence. He didn’t like relying on other people not to be shitty, cause, guess what, most of humanity was shitty. An alarming amount of them would do something fucking awful, or at least turn a blind eye to it.

He was freshly fifteen, freshly allowed to patrol by himself, and he intended to do a good fucking job of it, thank you very much.

And he’d intended mostly to fight people, but his plans had changed on finding a teen girl nearly unconscious in an alleyway.

She was small, red-tipped hair splayed on the ground, soaked with sweat. Her arms feebly moved when she saw him, and he could see her fishnets were torn. Her clothes stank of the sweat as he got close, but he could see feverish, frightened brown eyes on him.

He got closer, remembering this sort of sight all too well. The good news was, he was Robin now. He could definitely do something. He came forward slowly, promising, “It’s all right, I’m Robin, and you’re safe.”

Her eyes seemed to flicker, a gasping cough as she tried to speak. “Please…”

He sank down next to her, feeling her forehead. It was like a boiling tea kettle. She let out a whimper at what must have been the coolness of his hand. 

“I’m going to take you to the clinic, okay?” he said, easily concluding she was very sick.

“I can’t go back,” she choked out, “Please, I can’t.”

And Jason could only guess at what made her fearful of home or wherever she was afraid of going. He could guess she didn’t live at home, though. She seemed exactly like the kind of teen he’d seen time and again on the corner, desperate to support themselves so they wouldn’t have to return to a hellish home. 

What could be worse than hooking on the streets of Gotham, sheltered people often wondered? 

Jason knew there were things.

“You don’t want to go home?” he asked, checking her wrist for a pulse. It was kind of weak.

She shook her head, letting out an almost sob sound.

She was fucking terrified, he realized, maybe more terrified than of dying in an alley. Damn. He wished he could find her parents or whatever she had at home and kick the shit out of them. He pushed her hair back from her head gently, promising, “You’ll be okay. I’m going to make sure. That’s what Robin does, kay?”

She licked cracked lips, and her eyes seemed to settle on him in a trusting way.

“I’m gonna lift you, okay?” he asked, seeing the way her legs were trembling. There was little doubt to him that she wasn’t going to be able to walk.

She nodded, and lifted an arm, apparently trying to help.

She was kind of lightweight, and he got the feeling she would be less lightweight if she wasn’t so sick. Her one hand shook as she reached to grab the front of his uniform, a security grab, as if he wouldn’t be able to drop her then.

But her head pressed against his chest, and he could see her hazily look up at him, and he suddenly felt the burden of trust that had been put on him.

He carried her to the nearest clinic. He hadn’t really been to this one, but it was supposed to be affiliated with Leslie’s. Leslie was definitely trustworthy, her clinic had good staff.

The receptionist looked up. She gestured with her pen towards the plastic chairs, the waiting area, and then looked back down at the ancient monitor.

It made Jason feel a little indignant, and she’d better hope what she was doing was important. Still, he settled with the girl in the seat.

She started talking to him. “I’m the oldest.”

“Yeah?” Jason murmured back, “How many kids in your family?”

“Five,” she replied, “Two from mine, one from Alfonso, and two from the one.”

‘The one’ suggested she didn’t want to talk about him. And the way she was speaking was also losing coherency.

It couldn’t be much longer until they’d help her.

Jason decided to keep talking with her, keep her a little distracted, hopefully. “So, how old are you?”

“I just turned eighteen,” she murmured, and damn, she looked younger, “I’m nadult now.”

“Okay. Tell me about your family?”

She went quiet, and then said, “We never been the same since Shane. It was good then. It was good.” Her eyes were wet, and she looked up at Jason. “He got shot, y’know. Seventeen, shot dead. S’why I’m the oldest.”

Jason held her a little tighter, feeling the pain there. He pulled the cape up over her some, saying, “That’s some rough shit.”

She seemed to smile a little at that, a very sad smile. Like he reacted in a way that made the most sense to her. “I gotta go get that, though.”

“Get what?” Jason was confused.

“The tea. I hear it whistling and shit, an’ I need to make ramen and tea,” she murmured back.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked.

She seemed to squint at him a moment. “My room?”

“No, you’re at the clinic,” he replied, a sense of dread settling in his gut.

“I hope not,” she replied, eyelids fluttering feverishly.

That was it. She was deteriorating fast, and Jason couldn’t wait for the damn receptionist to get shit together. He stood, taking her over. “Hey!”

The receptionist looked up, looking mildly annoyed. “I’m busy.”

“Yeah, you’re about to get busier! Get a fucking doctor, she needs help!”

The receptionist eyed the tight, revealing purple dress the girl had on, a disapproving stare, like this was the fucking time for that kind of bullshit. She picked up the phone, and murmured, “Craig to the front desk, Craig.”

It was a tense silence, as the receptionist ignored them to tap away on her keyboard, and Jason glaring at her, as the girl kept murmuring things that really didn’t make much sense, including about being in a war.

Finally, a man in blue scrubs showed up, looking sweaty and annoyed. “What?”

“Please put her in a room,” the receptionist said, gesturing towards the girl and Jason. Craig, seemingly a nurse, wheeled over a rickety, cracked vinyl wheelchair.

Jason was relieved. The girl would get fucking care now, and he was optimistic. He got her settled in the chair, and, without much thinking about it, took off his cape and draped it around her. 

“No,” she murmured, reaching for him. 

“It’s okay,” Jason promised.

“No, I want my chair…” she murmured, and then she started crying. Jason leaned in to hug her. 

“I promise it’s gonna be okay. These people’ll help,” he insisted, knowing about Leslie and her staff. Knowing how hard they worked. She wouldn’t affiliate with a bad clinic. 

“But I wanna stay here,” she complained, confused eyes on him. “I wanna stay here.”

“Hey, I’m Robin, right? What’s your name?”

“Robin? Oh.” She seemed surprised. “’m Terraine.”

“Okay, Terraine, this dude here’s gonna help you. You can trust me, right?”

She nodded, tears still streaking down her face. “Yeah. I just…I have to do the tea.”

“Okay, I’ll handle the tea,” Jason promised.

And that seemed to settle her enough, though there was definite unease and apprehension on her face.

Craig wheeled her away without a word. It set discomfort prickling in Jason’s stomach, but he could trust these people. He could, he told himself, all signs to the contrary steadily ignored.

He knew they wouldn’t let him back, and so he didn’t ask.

He would regret it.

He left to go fight crime, and he was gone longer than he’d planned.

When he returned, wiping blood from his nose and aching all over, as he frequently did, he could see the receptionist look almost surprised at his return. Almost. Then her eyes flicked back to her screen.

“Hey. How’s she doing?”

The receptionist looked up, and said, crisply, “I’m afraid we can’t treat a minor without parental permission.”

Jason felt like his head might explode. “She’s not a minor, she’s eighteen!”

The receptionist shrugged. “We couldn’t have known. In any case, if you’d like the bill for her treatment, I can give it to you now or send it later, if you give me a contact address. Or perhaps to her parents.”

Jason was a masked vigilante, what the fuck was wrong with this woman? “Wait, if you thought she was a minor, what treatment did she get?”

The receptionist paged someone then, again Craig. 

It had been four goddamn hours. Jason didn’t know that Terraine would make it without treatment, she’d better have fucking gotten treatment, the icy pool in his stomach making him feel frantic. She _had_ to have.

Craig showed up, reeking of cigarette smoke. He looked irritable. “What?”

“What happened with the Doe girl?” the receptionist said.

Craig didn’t seem to notice Jason was standing there, and he shrugged. “You should probably call the coroner. I forgot, but I put the time down as 10:01 PM, since that…” he paled on seeing Robin.

She was dead. _Dead._

And they didn’t give a fuck. “Did you even ask her goddamn name or age?”

His words weren’t as loud as he expected.

“She didn’t give it,” came the response, Craig looking like he was not quite grasping the situation. A look like, ‘I’m not a miracle worker’ on his face, _except it wasn’t a miracle to ask someone their name or age and have them reply._

“Did you even treat her?” 

There was a small silence, and then Craig tried, “Without parental permission—“

“Fuck you, fuck you!” Jason shouted, “You didn’t even know she was a minor, fuck you, she said her name in front of you, and you just—“ Fury, agony seemed to pulse in his veins, and then a painful feeling in his stomach.

The receptionist said, almost as if this was inappropriate behavior, “I’m going to have to ask you to calm down—“

“Fuck you, I’ll beat the goddamn shit out of you!” Jason shouted at her. That shut her up.

It wasn’t even true, though. The minor defense they were giving? Emergencies were an exception.

And she’d died, alone, because they just didn’t give a shit. Jason wasn’t even sure what he was screaming at them, knowing that she was dead, that she’d suffered without ever seeing a doctor despite what he’d—

_He’d promised._

Security was showing up, and he could take them out, but he didn’t want to, stomach lurching like he was going to throw up.

He ran.

He ran and threw up in an alley and sank down, sobbing. 

They’d killed her. He’d put her somewhere they’d killed her. Their apathy and coldness and shit had killed her, and he’d put her in their hands.

He didn’t think he could live with himself.

No one would ever know what they’d done. No one would care. She was some nameless street walker to them, someone easily forgotten who’d never mattered as much as a big shot celebrity or a cute baby or some precious blonde child that everyone would mutter about it being so sad.

He screamed, punching the wall, and then sank down again. 

How could he live with himself?

He stayed there a long time, unwilling to move, unwilling to stop crying into his knees and hating himself for missing the signs. For blindly trusting. 

She hadn’t wanted to go. She wouldn’t have even known what was going on while she was suffering alone in some room.

Fuck them. Fuck those goddamn fuckers to hell.

He hoped they suffered. He hoped they got that sick and had people ignore them while they slowly died. He hoped they were in agony the whole time. He hoped that they never got to see anyone who loved them the whole time—

Goddamn Dick Grayson showed up about that moment. Who knew he was in town?

“Hey, Little Wing, are you—“

“I’m fucking fine, get the fuck away from me,” Jason growled, and he stood, already stalking off in the opposite direction of Nightwing.

“Hey, your cape—“

“Shut the fuck up and stop acting like you care,” Jason snapped back, and that shut him up.

Nightwing just watched him go.

And Jason had to wonder—was he similar to Terraine?

If he died, would he die alone? Would anyone give a shit?

Maybe Bruce, but he probably wouldn’t be dying if Bruce were there. He choked down the crying that threatened to be audible, and leapt onto a fire escape, disappearing from Nightwing’s view. Fuck him, everyone had always cared about him.

He doubted Dick Grayson had ever wondered if he’d die alone on the pavement or elsewhere.

Jason didn’t tell Bruce what had happened. He didn’t tell anyone, but he did sometimes stand outside the clinic, menacing, wishing he’d done more and making sure they wouldn’t forget either.

They seemed to ignore him anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything for about a week. I've been on the depression train. Twin and I are on very bad terms right now. Family is trying to pretend I didn't leave them, but rather they finally got me to go cause I'm so horrible.
> 
> But the big thing.
> 
> I had a client, an elderly lady, way back near the end of last year. I work for a caregiving company. I took her to her appointments, and I liked her. She lived at a nursing home.
> 
> And that nursing home fucking killed her. They neglected her health to the point she died. And I didn't figure it out in time. My complaint was too late. She died not two weeks after her third visit to the ER in the space of a month, which I just found out for sure now.
> 
> Why now? They didn't need my services. As the woman in charge so coldly told me not a half an hour after my client was in the ER fighting for her life, 'Oh, we won't need you anymore. We're moving her to hospice.'
> 
> They killed her. Not through evil or malice, just through apathy and a cold attitude.
> 
> And I'm kinda fucking messed up over that. When she was delirious, feverish and shit at her appointment, they tried to have me just bring her back, entirely unconcerned. Me and the RN on duty called the emergency line instead, and the nursing home folks were annoyed at the waste of resources and their time, apparently.
> 
> I really don't give a fuck that she was already in her eighties. She could have lived longer, but more importantly, she deserved to be treated with human dignity, and she just wasn't.
> 
> So, this was to help deal with that feeling. Sorry for the downer story, it's all I can do right now.


End file.
